


Kiss Before Dying

by deslea



Category: Harper's Island
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 15:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8629465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deslea/pseuds/deslea
Summary: In her dreams, she kisses him goodbye.





	

In her dreams, she kisses him goodbye.

She would have done it, too, if Jimmy hadn't been there. Because in that split-second it took her to realise she'd killed him, in that split-second it took her to know the nightmare was over, Henry became _Henry_ again, _her_ Henry. The Henry she could have loved, if he'd come to her in the usual way, and not this psychotic fever-dream he'd had to rid the world of everything that wasn't _her._

Not could have loved. _Would_ have loved.

She loves Jimmy, and she knows from the fragmented scribbles he left that Henry had loved Trish - at least as much as someone as damaged as Henry could love anyone. And she hadn't been in love with him, at least not in any usual way. 

But…he was her other half. Her first-and-last-thing, her father would have said, the one non-negotiable in her world. She loves Jimmy, but she'd have left him in a heartbeat for Henry, if Henry had asked. If he had been…had been _whole._

She could have accepted anything from Henry, she thinks. Anything but what he'd become.

She thinks of him as she rebuilds her life. Thinks of that one perfect moment, too early for death, too late for anything else, suspended between worlds with him, joined to him with the knife that connected her hand with his body. How long was it? A minute? Two? How long is a moment in the eye of a storm or the heart of a flame?

He had been poised for death, naked of everything but his love for her, a love as old as them both. She had been poised for life, knowing that Jimmy was there, knowing that everything she did here would be judged when it was over. And knowing, somehow, that she would need Jimmy to come out the other side.

And when he'd said, so childlike, so _Henry_ , "I love you," she could have held on to him. She could have kissed him. Could have said she loved him. It would have been true. She could have held him close while he died.

She hadn't. She had chosen the future without him, the world that would think badly of her for loving him, the revulsion for what he'd become. A revulsion that was fit and proper in the world, but had no place in the heart of the flame. The heart of the flame was about him and her, or it should have been. And she'd let it go dark.

She can never tell Jimmy. Can never tell _anyone_. For a thousand reasons. But how she wishes she had kissed him goodbye.

The tragedy of Henry, she thinks, was that his love was small. Small enough to content itself with making love to his bride before killing her. Small enough to content itself with holding her captive and getting - trying to get - her love under sufferance. Small enough to think that choosing life after killing scores was choice of life enough to earn her love. He knew glimmers of love, of giving, of sacrifice, of passion, but he had believed that the glimmers were all there was. He was like a child, starved of understanding, first by the parents who hadn't known how to reach him and then by the parent who had.

More and more, she finds herself at the island, now. The few surviving locals have abandoned it, and she owns a fair bit of it herself. Both her father and Henry had left her everything, including the house that was to be her prison. Her home. Both.

And her home and prison it has become. She sits there in the upstairs room. Not hers, but his. The one where he slept. Through the window, she can see where he died. Can see that perfect moment, that heart of the flame, unfold over and over. She sees it in her mind, and sees it in her dreams.

This is her penance, to re-live that moment, over and over, to give him the love she couldn't spare him that day. To give him peace, not because he'd earned it, but just because she loved him and the nightmare was over and she could afford - _should_ have afforded - to give it.

Now and then, she wonders. Wonders, had her confinement gone on, whether she could ever have come to forgive him, accept him, love him in his smallness. But she knows, deep down, that she couldn't. She might have gradually lost her fight, might have bonded with him out of necessity, but she would never have truly embraced him. She could never have loved what he had become, not the way he loved her. And eventually, he'd have realised it, and killed her, and then, probably, himself.

So she has never regretted killing him, not really. She understands its inevitability, its necessity, even its mercy. When that day unfolds in her mind and her dreams, she never fails to wield the knife.

But every time, she kisses him goodbye. 

END


End file.
